Page 61 of The Dead Romantics

A Dying Practice

Xavier Vernon Day was a loving husband, father, and friend. He grew up in Mairmont, where he inherited the Days Gone Funeral Home and became a paragon and beloved beacon in the community. He is survived by his wife, Isabella, and his three children, Florence, Carver, and Alice Day. He was...

My fingers fell silent against the keyboard. He was, what? Dead? Very. And this didn’t sound like the kind of obit he would want to have shared in theDaily Ram, Mairmont’s local paper.

I pushed my laptop back with a frustrated sigh, and reached for my coffee—when Ben materializedrightinto the seat. I jumped in surprise, spilling my drink. The waitress at the diner gave me a strange look before she rushed to grab a towel to help me clean it up.

“Thehell?” I hissed at him, and then smiled to the waitress as she came back with a towel. “Sorry, I’m such a klutz!”

“You are a terrible liar,” Ben remarked, leaning his head on his hand, elbow propped on the table.

After the waitress was gone, I glared at him. “Well if you’d stop justpoppingup in places, I wouldn’t be so startled, now would I?”

“I can’t help it,” he replied, a bit uncomfortably. “It just happens. One minute I’m...” He trailed off, and made a motion with his hand, although he looked a bit troubled. “And then I’m here. Where you are. I take it that doesn’t happen with other ghosts?”

“Not that I can remember. They just hang around until I help them with whatever they’re sticking around for. They don’t just pop in when I’m naked in the shower.”

He coughed to hide a chuckle, and glanced away, his cheeks burning red. “It was just as awkward for me.”

“Was it? Really?” I asked sarcastically, and sighed. “Never mind, we’re going to ignore it.” I finished cleaning up my mess, and realized I had, in fact, spilledallof the coffee. Perfect. I signaled for the waitress to refill my mug, and took out my phone, so that the old guy reading the personals in theDaily Ramin the booth next to me didn’t think I was talking to myself. “You don’t remember where you go when you disappear?”

“No.”

The waitress came by to refill my coffee mug.

Ben frowned and waved his hand through the steam rising from my mug. It passed right through his fingers. “It feels weird when I disappear. Like I know something happens but I can’t remember exactly what.”

I took a sip of coffee. Oh god, too strong. I dumped half the world’s sugar supply into it, and tasted it again. Better. “Maybe you go nowhere.”

“That’s fuckingterrifying.”

“You’re welcome.”

He leaned forward a little bit, as if to try to look at my computer screen.

I angled it downward. “Rude.”

“Working on the manuscript?”

“No. Dad’s obituary,” I admitted. A part of me wondered if, instead of a letter Dad wrote for us to read at his funeral, he could’ve taken that time to write his obit instead. Whenever a bereaved person was having trouble with their obituaries, he would help them write the best goodbyes. He was remarkably good at them.

I was definitely not.

“Ah.” He sank back in his booth. Tapped his fingers on the table. “I take it by the look on your face it’s not going well?”

“My face can tell you that much?”

“Your eyebrows pinch. Right there.” He pointed between them, so close I felt the chill of his finger against my forehead.

I sat back and rubbed at the line between my brows. The last thing I needed wasmorewrinkles. “The obit is going about as good as everything else in my life right now, Ben. Fuckingterribly.” It wasn’t his fault that I was failing so hard at my dad’s obituary, and the second I raised my voice at him I felt bad. I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just...”

I missed my dad.

And then it hit me again—this grief that stretched like an endless field of all the things I used to feel for Dad. I was so used to compartmentalizing my life, but now the two bled together, and it made my chest hurt. I was having coffee, writing my dad’s obit, andDad was dead.

I blinked back my tears and gave him a fake smile. He could see right through it because his dark eyes flickered.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Great. I just—I have to go.”

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